Australia is such a small country that, whenever any Australian gets noticed for anything we all tend to feel a glow of vicarious achievement[1]. So I was pleased to see that Germaine Greer was ranked second in a Prospect magazine list of 100 top British intellectuals. Having enjoyed my burst of patriotic pride, I have to ask what they are smoking in the Old Country these days. The Australian view of Germaine Greer[2] is probably best summed up by Geoff Honnor
Greer has metamorphosised into a Barry Humphries creation: the eccentric old bluestocking aunt who loves to blather on in a colourfully opinionated, slightly shocking way about the great issues of the day. These, oddly enough, seem to always come back to the single greatest issue of all – herself.
In fact, Humphries himself would rank ahead of Greer in my rankings of expat Aussie intellectuals. And if you want an expat with bitterly negative views of home, you can’t go past Robert Hughes (since he’s based in the US, he wasn’t eligible for the Prospect poll).
fn1. And we’re not too fussy as to who we count as an Australian. In particular, any Kiwi who’s done so much as pass through the transit lounge at Sydney airport automatically has their achievements added to the Australian total. OTOH, we’re happy to disown Rupert Murdoch.
fn2. I leave aside the shrinking pool of those who are silly enough to be outraged by her provocations
John Quiggin 
The other Australian on the list is Robert May, who really is a distinguished intellectual.
He only got 1/10 the votes Greer got, though.
It is a curious list. Greer is very strong on the public aspect but these days weak on the intellectual side. Sen by contrast is strong intellectually but I would not have thought he would rate so highly on the public side. His books aren’t exactly light reading, while many others on the list are good writers. Perhaps the Nobel Prize boosted his standing.
Staggering. I’m absolutely gobsmacked. Was it based on self-promotion, or ability and contribution? [Don’t answer that – it’s a rhetorical question]
The upside for us, of course, is that if she’s British we can stop pretending she’s relevant to Australia.
That was my take on Greer actually John, though Ken’s view is not dissimilar.
Geoff, I had just realised this and was making the edit when your comment came in.
The fact that Germs gets an order of magnitude more popular votes than Robert May, when in fact May has contributed about an order of magnitude more intellectual value, is indicative of the ignorance of sci-tech amongst public intellectuals.
May is President of the Royal Society, which should put him in the first eleven of any team of public intellectuals.
I agree that Humphries is the best Oz intellectual in the UK, although Australian film directors, such as Berenson and Noyce, have had more influence on public culture than any other form of intellectual
I would like to give Nick Cave a guernsey as a deep thinking kinda guy. He has recently confessed to reading the daily newspaper, an encouraging sign that shows he takes a keen interest in the modern scene. But his heart does not seem to be in it:
This is an audience list, so it will inevitably valorise people who can at least co-operate with public promotion.
It probably tells us something about where the Beeb draws the line on ideas it thinks are too complex for public consumption.
It also reflects IMHO a general collision between a slow, slow increase in the public consumption of ideas driven material like good popular non-fiction books, and the erosion of the Beeb and British commercial television. The reasons warrant extensive discussion in other forums by better informed people than me, but the industry knows it is happening.
Robert May deserves a series. What a biography!
JQ,
How’s this for a really unproductive use of your (valuable) time: run your own “blog-poll” on the top 100 [top 20?] intellectual Australians.
Whaddayareckon?
P.S. obviously a lot of deep thought going on with that Nick Cave – number one with a rocket, obviously.
I note that Sir John Maddox does not get a guernsey. He was only editor of Nature magazine for about 800 years after the Second World War! What are these people smoking?
On the list – to do it proportionally, we would need to list around 30. We would have to drop the bar though on the definition of “public intellectual” – because they don’t get as much publicity. For that reason, it is a less significant exercise.
listing smartarses
The British Prospect Magazine has published a list of the top one hundred public intellectuals in the UK, according to its readership. It is a kick in the head for our own public culture. As Quiggin points out, Germs Greer…
listing smartarses
The British Prospect Magazine has published a list of the top one hundred public intellectuals in the UK, according to its readership. It is a kick in the head for our own public culture. As Quiggin points out, Germs Greer…
listing smartarses
Thirty years after this photo was taken, Robert McCredie is the President of the Royal Society, and recent Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government and Head of its Office of Science and Technology. His research is profoundly important. At…